Al Franken keeps comedy in check

When Rand Paul needed a zinger, Al Franken gave him a suggestion: a self-deprecating joke about suffering through childhood with a libertarian father who wouldn’t let up on the gold standard.

“It wouldn’t have been so bad if my dad wasn’t so damn cheap,” Franken privately told Paul to use as a laugh line. “Just 50 cents in gold coins.”

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Since he arrived in the Senate three years ago, the former “Saturday Night Live” star has tried to project an ultra-serious public image of a studious and hard-working senator who shuns the media spotlight and whose past career as a comedian and satirist is just that — a thing of the past.

But behind the scenes, Al Franken is still Al Franken. He ribs fellow senators and cracks jokes, whether it’s impersonating the first Jewish man he met with a heavy West Virginia drawl or giving a mock Oscar speech before the Senate Democratic Caucus. His star power is a major draw at Democratic fundraisers, having attended a dozen events for state parties and Senate candidates across the country, including Richard Carmona in Arizona and Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts.

Privately, he’s also shown his temper, such as in a previously unreported episode when Franken launched a profanity-laced tirade on White House adviser Gene Sperling in a closed-door meeting about taxes.

But Franken rarely lets his celebrity status show publicly. He almost never does interviews on Capitol Hill, doesn’t deliver one-liners or Stuart Smalley impressions in public settings and has cultivated a cautious, wonky image as the junior senator from Minnesota. He said he wanted to show colleagues he didn’t come to Congress “to take away their ink” or “jump in front of the camera” and instead wants to work on legislation.

Franken sat down recently with POLITICO for a rare interview with a non-Minnesota media outlet, and he admitted that his sense of humor has helped him build relations with his colleagues and overcome GOP skepticism after he excoriated Rush Limbaugh and other prominent conservatives in his best-selling books.

“The Republicans, I think, at first were a little like, ‘Oh, he’s a satirist who uses scorn and ridicule against Republicans,’ and then after they got to meet me, they were like, ‘Oh, he’s a comedian,’” Franken told POLITICO. “‘He’s a comedian. He’s got a good sense of humor. He likes to laugh. I get it.’ And that kind of went away, that first initial trepidation, I think went away very quickly.”

Indeed, Franken’s guffaw is a Senate staple these days, bellowing in elevators packed with senators or on the floor during votes. He let out loud cackles the other day when he asked whether West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s car ran on coal, and after he asked Republican Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt — the author of legislation to kill the Obama birth-control mandate — whether their highway bill amendment included contraceptive language.

“He’s always got a wonderful way when there’s a serious thing you’re doing, he’s got some different little plan or view on it that makes you think, you know, he ain’t that serious after all,” Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said with a chuckle.